Natural disasters such as earthquakes or power outages may cover a vast area, and the impact of such disasters on the physical infrastructure of the communication network may cause large-scale network failures. Simultaneous damage in several links and nodes of networks may cause substantial loss of information, which can be very costly for governments, subscribers and businesses. For example, the Taiwan earthquake in December 2006 cut several undersea cables at the same time, causing a major communication disruption in part of Asia for several weeks. In this regard, the survivability of critical infrastructure systems in the presence of large-scale failures and continued undisrupted network operations, have become a main concern for communication networks.
Network failure recovery models may focus on single or double link failure. Network failure recovery models may assume that the failures are independent and consecutive failures may not happen at the same time. However, this assumption may not be valid in large scale failure scenarios. For instance, in an earthquake event, the failure may be controlled by the external factors and damage can cover a vast area. This may increase the risk of failure in several network components simultaneously.
Single failure scenarios may be recovered using pre-planned disjoint backup paths. This approach may not be appropriate in large-scale failure scenarios. Although establishing several disjoint backup paths may enhance the chance that at a minimum one of the paths survives, it may significantly increase the cost of network resources.
There exists a need for an improved device, system or method to better manage and minimize the damage inflicted by potential and real large-scale failure of networks, or at least alternatives.